


Baby Steps

by ivorygates



Series: Naquadaah Magnolia [1]
Category: Clan Mitchell - Fandom, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Clan Mitchell, Gen, Girl!Daniel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 20:26:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1. What if Danielle Jackson had been raised by Cameron Mitchell's family?</p><p>Dani Jackson is eight and newly-orphaned.  Sassy Mitchell always has room for one more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby Steps

August, 1973:

She was born just plain Sara Griffith in a no-account town up back in the hills not a good stone's throw from her nowdays kitchen sink, and while they were courting, Ev called her just about every nickname in the book, but Sairy Sassafras was the one that stuck. It's gotten itself shortened over the years to Sassy and there are times she barely remembers Sara Griffith any more. Sara Griffith got swallowed up in Sassy Mitchell a long time ago. And she's a Mitchell now, bred not born, living in that big old white farmhouse out the middle of SR93, Buncombe County, North Carolina, where Everett brought her (going on to twelve years back now) to get his Momma and Daddy's yea, because she'd chased after him until he caught her but it wouldn't have mattered one way or the other without his folks and his kin to give the nod. And folks in these parts remember Sassy's uncles -- the Chiffelle boys -- right well and that not fondly, for all that local legend has it Gran'pa Chiffelle's White Lightning kept the county happy during the Great Experiment and his boys were the ones who ran it before they answered their country's call back in 'forty-one.

Sassy's been a Blue Ridge girl all her life, caboose child of Momma's second family, youngest of five, and her daddy (God rest him) was a good man but hard as a shoeing nail, and his rearing shows yet in her brothers (the ones who've come back, and she _will not_ give up hope yet for Asher to come home, because "missing" isn't for-sure dead) and their young'uns. But Sassy's Momma, Keturah Chiffelle-as-was, was married before she married up with Sam Griffith. There's not one picture from Momma's life before Daddy -- not her folks, not her first man -- and Sassy expects her momma would just have buried old secrets deep if not for Alvin. 

Alvin's what folks here call a buzzard egg, and there's some kind of scandal up around Momma's first marriage, and Alvin might have just been a toddler when Momma upped stakes and came on home, but he knows all the dirty laundry, of course. Says he'll tell her on her deathbed, the shitepoke. He's got a good fifteen years on her (was the one she ran to with all her secrets when she was a baby, and he broke her heart when he went off to college, but the dinner table was a damned sight quieter) and she says she'll be the one putting him into the ground come the day. Alvin always says right back to her that unmarried men live longer, and Sassy's Momma didn't raise any complete fools, thank you kindly.

When he calls, it's almost always (he says) to see if he's got to drop everything and light out cross country to come to her deathbed and tell tales out of school. She always answers him back just the same: she'll dance at his funeral and sell tickets, too.

Today's conversation is different.

"You remember the Jacksons, don't you, Sairy? Doctor and Doctor?"

She has to think about it a bit before she answers him back. Alvin brought them home with him for one Thanksgiving a year or so after she was married. Almost ten years back that is, now, and she was a new bride, jumpy as a frog in a fry-pan poking her nose into Momma Mitchell's kitchen and all the relations keeping a weather eye on her to see if she was going to stand, and she'd asked Alvin if he'd come (all her full brothers gone away to war, and of the four, only two would ever come home again at all) and he had, and brought friends with him, and she'd've like to killed him on the doorstop, but Momma Mitchell said the house always had room for more at holidays, and they'd gotten into one argument with Alvin over the dinner table on somewhat, and another one after dinner about the war.

Every Sunday she gives thanks that Everett came home from that. It's one of her secrets.

But she can tell him, yes, she does remember them, and does he have any particular cause to be mentioning them at this bright particular moment?

So what does Alvin do but say he's just got off the telephone with Bill Prowse in Chicago, and the Jacksons have passed on (sudden and unexpected) and it wouldn't be so bad if no one knew what to do with their baby girl (she's thinking of a child near to Cameron's age, but Alvin says she's a bit older; doesn't matter) but her grandfather's showed up to the burying and means to take off into the high timber with her, and Bill Prowse hasn't got a good word to say about Dr. Ballard, and she'd have thought Dr. Prowse would praise the Devil himself.

Always room for another stray at Black Mountain.

#

Sassy learns all manner of new words that summer, since when the poor mite talks at all, it isn't a word of it English, and she spends plenty of time on the phone to Alvin. He isn't best pleased to be hailed out of his books to help with the translations (if it was German or Russian or French or even Latin she could wrangle something on her own doorstep, the Family being handy that way, but it isn't any of those), but Sassy isn't of a mind to let him off the hook. "You caught it, you cook it," she tells him.

Cameron, bless his heart, just chatters away to the girl like a little jaybird, dragging her around by the hand to all his special places and offering her his toys.

By the end of two weeks Sassy's got a working pidjin of "bed" and "bath" and "sleep" and "eat", and she knew from Day One better'n to leave the lights off in that poor child's room of a night. She don't hold with coddling young'uns, and Lord knows her Daddy never did, but there's a time for being firm, and it can wait until little Danielle's got her feet under her again. And maybe after she opens her mouth and says a true word or two.

And Sassy's got another one on the way, and Everett's deployed and not precisely available to ask his opinion of, but she knows his mind, and Momma Mitchell's mind besides. So she writes to Everett and tells him everything, and phones up Dr. and Mrs. Prowse to make sure they don't have any particular objection (which they don't, and she thought, from everything Alvin said about them that they wouldn't; never thought the day would come that they'd have charge of Claire and Melburne's girl in the first place), and then she brings suit in the County Court to take charge of Danielle Alexandria Jackson all right and legal.

About a month after Danielle's come to them, she and Cameron come into the house for lunch. Both of them all over mud (out in the side-yard digging), and she sends them to wash up, and they come back, and she sits them down at the table with sandwiches and juice, and Danielle looks right at her and says, "My parents are dead," and it takes Sassy half a minute to realize that the girl's said a whole sentence right out and in English.

"That's right," she says, because there's no point in varnishing the facts.

"I don't want them to be dead," Danielle says, and bursts into tears.

Well, there's no child too old for a lap when there's a need and the girl's only eight, so Sassy pulls up a chair and sits down and gathers Danielle up, and Danielle throws her arms around her neck and wails, and that sets Cameron off, of course, and he gets down from his chair and comes over and hangs on to her knee. And Sassy would much rather have a kitchen full of wailing children than the silent little ghost that's been sliding around the walls not saying two words together, and eventually Danielle cries herself out, and Sassy tells Cameron he isn't hurt and that Danielle's fine, and then she tells Danielle that everything's going to _be_ fine (not now but someday) and that Danielle is going to live here with them now.

It's another two months before her petition is heard in the court, and by then she's actually heard back from Ev (says he looks forward to meeting his new daughter, the bustard). The world and his wife comes to see the business done, including little Danielle's grandfather.

#

Sassy isn't any more impressed with Doctor Nicholas Wilhelm Ballard the second time she sees him than the first, and she gives thanks to God for Everett's mother, because Hildegard Mitchell not only isn't afraid of man, beast, God, or devil (the two of them have that much in common; Sassy suspects that's why Momma Mitchell let her in the door, her having run Everett's girls off for years), but there's a mighty short list of things she approves of, and there's many a time Sassy thinks even God Almighty doesn't make that list. After Momma Hildy, Sassy isn't about to back down from some puffed-up fool who thinks he can bluff and bluster himself into his own way.

Courtroom's packed with Mitchells and Griffiths and Butlers and Duquesnes and Chandlers and one or two by-chance Chiffelles and of course Alvin's come and the Ladies Auxiliary is there from First Methodist and the Ladies Aid is there from First Baptist all lined up in their best silk dresses and Sunday-Go-To-Meeting hats looking like they're ready to charge the Yankee lines if there were any to hand and Sassy bought Danielle a pretty blue dress to wear and told her she wasn't to worry, and Molly Pilchard from County Children's Services (and don't Sassy recollect giving Molly her letters seems like yesterday?) sitting in the front row with them next to her and Danielle and Cameron in his very best short-pants suit. 

And Nicholas Ballard may think he's coming to fetch his granddaughter off with him from a passel of strangers, and he may think this is just a hearing, but Sassy knows the fool Yankee hasn't come to a hearing, he's come to his own execution. Because that's her born cousin on the Chiffelle side sitting up there on that bench, and she don't hold with playing fast-and-loose with the law, but there's plenty of times where Justice should ought to take her blindfold off and take a good look around.

The Court plays fair though, lets Doc Ballard hang himself with his own tongue. He can't fairly say what his plans are for Danielle's schooling, and he don't have any fixed address, either. Not even an American citizen, come to it. Resident Alien, and Sassy don't hold that against him, him being a War Hero and all, but right now they're talking about what's good for Danielle.

And Danielle's following everything being said, eyes as big as saucers, while Sassy and Doc Ballard both have their say, and in the end Judge Arendall Chifelle asks Danielle what _she_ wants to do. And Heaven bless the child, she just climbs up into Sassy's lap and hides her face against her shoulder, while Cameron sings out bright as you please: "Oh, please don't take my sister away!"

After that it don't do Nicholas Ballard any good at all to try to explain to Danielle that he's her grandfather, and her mother's father, and that his little Claire -- her mama -- would want her to go with him. Sassy knows for a dead solid fact that Danielle never clapped eyes on Nicholas Ballard before her parents' funeral, and she's also gotten a good look at the Jacksons' wills. "Little Claire" didn't mention her daddy in hers anywhere.

The court rules. Done is done. Sara and Everett Mitchell become the legal guardians of Danielle Alexandria Jackson.

#


End file.
